Embodiments of the present invention create a calibration module for a tester, which can be used to calibrate an RF-part of the tester. Further embodiments of the present invention create a tester with an exchangeable calibration module.
RF sources and RF receivers in an automated test equipment (ATE) provide RF resources at connection pins to the device under test (DUT) interface. To achieve calibrated power level and enable scalar and vector (=s-parameter) measurements a per-pin-calibration is necessitated. This is done either by an external calibration kit or calibration robot which can connect to all RF pins and routes the pin to measurement devices for transmit signals and provides a loop-back to a receiver input.
As a typical calibration kit has only one measurement capability connectable to one input, all RF pins have to be calibrated one after the other. This leads to long calibration times and hence downtime of the ATE. One pin necessitates a calibration time in the range of minutes. A potential ATE-System with several hundred pins would necessitate many hours.